It's such a shame Star Trek didn't continue with the cast from The Cage.

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Yes, but the actor next to Jeffrey Hunter had another short appearance in the "briefing lounge" scene of "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Too bad we didn't see more of him in the regular series as a little effort in terms of continuity.

It's such a shame Star Trek didn't continue with the cast from The Cage.

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Is it really a shame? The network rejected them because a) they weren't really very interesting for the most part and b) they were all-white, despite Roddenberry's promise to satisfy the network's desire for ethnic diversity. Would Trek have been so influential and culturally significant if it had presented a lily-white version of the future, with maybe a few token minorities in the background here and there?

Jeffrey Hunter and William Shatner were basically playing the same character to start with -- early Kirk was written all but indistinguishably from Pike -- but Shatner brought a warmth, humor, and accessibility to the role that Hunter didn't. Similarly, John Hoyt was playing the same character as DeForest Kelley aside from the name, but Kelley was the actor Roddenberry had wanted in the doctor role all along; he just didn't manage to get him until the third try.

As for Number One, not to disparage Majel Barrett's acting, but I'm not sure it would've been good for the show or the actress for the leading lady to be the showrunner's mistress. Even aside from the possible scandals, it might've led to Roddenberry being too indulgent of her or not pushing her hard enough as an actress. And it could've led to strife among the cast if it was felt that she was getting special treatment. As for Nimoy, he could very well have still been the breakout star for the same reasons as in reality, and then there could've been internal strife about whether Spock or Number One should be the more prominent character.

As for the rest, Peter Duryea was kind of dull, and I can barely even remember the guy who played Garison. They didn't seem to have a chief engineer, a role that would soon become essential.

I would've been okay with them keeping Goodwin as Colt; I liked her more than I ever liked Rand. But then it would've been unfeasible to present the events of "The Cage" as something that happened 13 years earlier.

I liked John Hoyt as the doctor, though if he'd been kept on, we wouldn't have gotten DeForest Kelley as McCoy. Hoyt was a good choice I thought, as he had sci-fi experience (the wheelchaired bad guy in When Worlds Collide, and had appeared as an alien in The Outer Limits: The Bellero Shield, with Sally Kellerman about a year before "The Cage"). I watched "The Menagerie" recently, and most of the nameless supporting characters in the "Cage" footage were memorably unmemorable.

The only thing I found notable about Peter Duryea was his voice sounded a bit like his dad's (Dan Duryea).

I find Kirk's first crew from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" more interesting than Pike's. According to the 1966-67 NBC leaflet thingie in the middle of Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (with the infamous airbrushed Spock photo), Kirk's supporting cast would have consisted of Dr. Piper (McCoy by another name, although there is mention of evaluating local flora, which never much came up in te series aside from "This Side of Paradise") Scotty (Scotty), Communications Officer Alden (a technician and one of the youngest members of the crew. Manhura.), Physicist Sulu (whose job was to tell us about each week's planet before we beamed down) and Yeoman Smith (Rand)

^Yeoman Smith was played up in that brochure and other publicity as being the third lead, part of the core trio with Kirk and Spock, but she ended up having exactly one line, "The name's Smith, sir." Plus that non-dialogue bit where she was scared and Mitchell held her hand. Otherwise, her entire purpose in the pilot was essentially decorative.

^Yeoman Smith was played up in that brochure and other publicity as being the third lead, part of the core trio with Kirk and Spock, but she ended up having exactly one line, "The name's Smith, sir." Plus that non-dialogue bit where she was scared and Mitchell held her hand. Otherwise, her entire purpose in the pilot was essentially decorative.

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When Gene Roddenberry was asked about this non-part, he allegedly said : "I only hired her because I wanted to score with her."